2013 Ford Fusion Features Robot Tested Seats

It would appear that if you don't like the feel of the seats in the 2013 Ford Fusion you could partially blame a robot affectionately named Ruth. Ruth, you see, is a well-trained Robotized Unit for Tactility and Haptics (RUTH).

Ford engineers in Dearborn are using Ruth to ensure that the interior of the 2013 Fusion has components with the touch and feel that consumers like. This quality can be tough to define yet we all know by the feel of trim panels and the touch of buttons if we are in an expensive car.

Ford says its Ruth is the first one to be used by an automaker in North America although her skills have already been utilized in Europe. She is a small robot that sits in vehicles and uses a giant arm and `fingers' to feel all aspects of a car's interior. The arm has six joints, and is programmed to poke trim, turn knobs, push buttons and interact with many of a vehicle's interior areas in the same manner as a person would.

You can watch Luke and Eileen, they are human, describe what Ruth does in this video:

They explain how Ruth uses quantitative data to put hard numbers on how soft trim materials are or how hard one needs to touch a button. The data has been gathered from extensive consumer focus groups in order to quantify quality in mathematical terms that can be accurately repeated.

Eileen Franko, the Ford craftsmanship supervisor in the video, believes Ruth results in greater customer satisfaction. "Thanks to the data provided by Ruth, we can be sure the customer who buys a car like Fusion will experience the same type of quality they might feel if they were to buy a high-end luxury car," Franko says. "I might be biased, but Ruth isn't. We know the steering wheel and the armrest softness in Fusion are the best in the world."

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